[AustinCarlile] Live Forever

[AustinCarlile] Live Forever [ChapterFive]

Third Person.

“Ms. Pierce, would you like an update?” The voice startles her, a calm voice, as if nothing had happened to her brother, as if she wasn’t about to lose one of the most important people in her life, she whips her head around, not caring enough to wipe away the tears, not caring enough to fix her disheveled hair. “We have induced your brother into a coma. As of right now, there’s a twenty percent chance of him making it. We also figured out how this happened. Would you like to know?”

 

It didn’t take long for her to break down again, and this time Nate began to cry too, this time letting the tears spill onto his cheeks. Tilting her head back, she pulls her knees up to her chest, curling her back as she rests her forehead on her knees, and she could see her entire world crumble in front of her.

 

“Yes, we would.” Nate asks, there’s no reason to ask the question, just tell them, that’s all they want to know, how this really happened; the update wasn’t what they were expecting, not with a calm voice like hers, his voice rising, high, angry, and he goes to stand up, only to be stopped when Devon turns her body, leaning against his, her fingers gripping onto his shirt, holding him down. “That’s not an update. You're lucky that I'm stuck here right now, because you would be in a hospital bed if I was able to get my hands on you.” It’s not a threat, his voice doesn’t sound intimidating, and the nurse only nods; it’s a horrible situation. And the two of them, they weren’t ready to lose someone, not him, they couldn’t.

 

The nurse runs her hands down her scrub, nervous, suddenly rethinking what she has agreed to, not wanting to be the one to tell them more news, seeing the two of them like this, especially the patient’s sister, it was heartbreaking. “The woman who was in the other car was on her cell phone. According to witnesses, she was drifting into Adam’s lane. Adam honked his horn, to try to get her to realize what was happening, and in a panic she turned the wheel the wrong way, hitting your brother’s car. His car slammed into the road divider.”

 

A sob racks through her body, painful, powerful, it causes her to lose her breath, makes her cough, hacking at the hurt in her chest, and arms slide around her waist to keep her up, hold her up, don’t let her fall. Struggling, pushing at the arms, clawing at her stomach, kicking her legs out in front of her, warm, fresh, thick tears streaming down her face, her cheeks red, her eyes bloodshot and burning. “I'm, she’s, I'm going to kill her.” The scene she’s causing, the amount of stares that she’s receiving – some worried and others sympathetic – they don’t matter to her, not now, not when the one person who has been there through everything is in there.

 

“We, we have to, to stay positive.” He doesn’t know what to say, doesn’t know if he should say anything, not with tears in his eyes and a lump in his throat, because as soon as she hears the panic in his voice, it’s all real – if he’s worried, then she should worry. At that moment, the thing that he feared was happening, she was tugging away from his grasp, ready to break into the woman’s room, do whatever she believed would make her feel better, make this easier, but he clasps his fingers together around her stomach, pulling backwards.

 

Reaching out, fighting against the hold, she stops, her body collapsing, her knees going weak, her arms falling to her side, and she curls over,  her hands covering her face as she allows him to slowly place her on the floor. “I, I can’t, he can’t.” Her chest heaves up and down with every breath she takes, her breathing jagged, she has no energy, all of it left with the phone call, with the anticipation, with the news, with the situation.